Archive of Our Own

Joel learns quickly that he can’t stand the way Ellie cries. 

It’s all hushed- tears pricking at her cow eyes, head quickly turning away from him so he doesn’t see the way she swipes at her face. The first time he sees it is after she shoots that kid in Kansas City, after he told her she shouldn’t have to. He can’t stop thinking about the screams (“ Mom! Mom! ”) and thinks that she can’t stop thinking about it either. When he says that he knows what it’s like, to hurt someone for the first time, and she tells him it’s not the first, eyes a little glossy and her cheek facing his way so he can’t see, he feels that tug. Squashes it down quickly. 

The next time he sees her cry, it’s even worse. Sam is impossibly small as Joel lowers him into the grave, and somehow Henry is too when Joel places him right after, the brothers almost hugging in the morning dawn, almost sleeping if not for the pillowcases over both of their heads to hide the blood and brains. Both are too young- Sam a child and Henry one too. He doesn’t know how old Henry is, but Joel knows that he was around Henry’s age when Sarah was born. He had felt like a newborn himself, cradling her in his arms, a college dropout and newlywed, with no clue what the fuck he was doing or how he was going to raise a little girl all on his own.

Ellie turns her face away when they’re on the road a few hours later and tiredness makes it impossible for her to hold in the tears.
She cries like it’s something to be punished for. She does it silently, hidden away in the darkness of her sleeping bag or with her cheek pressed to a car window. She’s only honest about it in the dead of night, when she’s sleeping and dreaming of someone named Riley and the tears fall freely as she calls out with helpless longing. Joel never presses her for details– who is he to do so, when his own regrets haunt his dreams like spirits from the beyond? He can still smell the laundry detergent on Sarah’s shirt, the softness of her hair as he clumsily braided it for her before soccer practice, her smile warming him more than a summer’s day. 

He thinks maybe Ellie is scared of her own tears. She seems to think it’s some kind of weakness; and Joel wonders if maybe it was. He doesn’t know how FEDRA deals with crying kids, but he doubts it’s with hugs and understanding words. Probably, more than anything, it’s The Hole. Even he had heard about it, despite trying to avoid the kids of the Boston QZ as much as possible. But word gets around, especially when one of them dies of heat exhaustion and dehydration in solitary confinement. That had been a few years ago, he doesn’t even know if Ellie knows about it, but he’s sure if she did it would be just another reason on top of many as to why she wouldn’t want to show a tear-streaked face.

He lets her cry like that, hidden and away, and tries not to seem bothered by it. 

—-

She doesn’t cry, after Silver Lake. 

Truthfully, she doesn’t do much of anything. She’s like a robot, following basic prompts– walk, stop, rest . But she doesn’t speak, doesn’t make jokes. Doesn’t cry. 

Joel isn’t stupid enough to act as if he knows what she’s going through. How could he? He isn’t fourteen, barely a teenager, with bruises around their throat and someone else’s blood splattered across their face. 

He doesn’t really remember much about his journey to Silver Lake. He remembers the men, busted knee caps and smashed in skulls, but nothing about the journey there. He could blame it on his injury, if anyone asks him to retrace the journey, but it would be a half-truth. Rather than the injury at his side, the stitches threatening to break at any quick movement, he had only the single-minded focus of getting Ellie, gotta save her before they do something, gotta save her before she dies, before something worse happens. 

It’s a worry that’s niggled at the back of his mind their entire journey. Even months before, he had worried about it, sitting and eating Chef Boyardee with a lantern between them, the sanctuary of Bill and Frank’s a fresh reprieve from their travel out west. 

“ So what are they gonna do? Rob us?”

“ They’ll have way more in mind than that.” 

He’s sure Ellie knows what that means. She’s fourteen, and even in the Before– before Infected and QZs and scum for the government like FEDRA– there had been such a thing as Stranger Danger. Little girls don’t go out by themselves because the world would rather teach them fear than kill all the horrible, perverse adults that would do them harm. Girls have it the worst out of anyone, then and now, and he wishes he’d taught Ellie more self defense in their down time, when both of them couldn’t sleep. He worried with Sarah, off to school on her own and at extracurriculars, and now in some awful, fucked up way he’s worrying the same thing for Ellie; twenty fears later, kidnapped by a group of fucking men in the middle of the fucking apocalypse. 

There’s buzzing in his ears when he reaches the town; turned quickly into a roar at the bodies hanging from the ceiling. He’s desperate to make sure they aren’t her, they can’t be her– but after a quick glance, he knows enough about meat to know none would be fresh enough to be his girl. And isn’t that the most fucked up thing to be relieved about. 

He finds her bag, the dumb little squish hanging off the zip practically taunting him. He has to find her, he has to. 

He finds her too late. 

She’s stumbling from a smoking building, hair strewn all over the place, and even from behind he knows it’s her. Of course he does; he’d know that tiny frame anywhere, all that 5’1 spitfire, staggering towards the trees as fast as she can. But her cant is all wonky, she’s hurt, and he can’t let her potentially fall amongst the trees and snow, where she can hurt herself even more, can’t risk her slicing her hands open and causing an infection. 

He can’t think of anything but reaching her, desperate to let her know she’s safe, to ask who did this, to never let her go. 

He grabs her from behind, and she thrashes against him, screaming like a terrified animal, and it isn’t until he’s turned her around and she can see his face that she settles, trembling and choking on her shock. He cradles her to him like a newborn, tight and secure, wraps his jacket around her like a shield, calls her baby girl and hopes she knows he’ll never ever let this happen to her again. He’ll tear the whole world down before he lets that happen.

If he believed in that forsaken god, he would be praying. 

He leads her away from the town, as fast as they can. Once they’re amongst the thickest of the trees, out of the most obvious danger, Ellie crumbles with a yelp. 

Joel catches her before she lands on the hard winter dirt, and she looks up at him but doesn’t really see. 

“Ellie-” She flinches, and he fights the urge to storm right back to Silver Lake, demanding to find the person who made her scared of her own name . He reckons she already sorted that out though, by the blood. 

“Baby.” He says instead, relieved when some of the tension leaves her body. “What’s happening, can you walk?”

She can’t seem to find the words– or, more like, she doesn’t even register what he asks her. He calls out for her again, but she doesn’t respond. She just stares through him. Hesitantly, he moves his hand in front of her eyes. She doesn’t even flinch. Okay. Okay . 

He goes on one knee to look her over, all too aware they aren’t far enough away from town to be completely in the clear. He needs to look her over though, and notices bruising around one of her ankles, and hisses sympathetically. If it’s even sprained, it must be killing in the cold, and he sighs, wrapping his arms around her to hoist her onto his back. 

She at least seems to be able to follow direction, and wraps her arms around his neck, burying her face against his shoulder. He doesn’t mind the blood and gore on her, holding onto her legs tightly. They have a long journey ahead of them from here. 

—

He thinks she’s going to cry when he has to check her ribs. 

It’s awful for both of them. He had found them a cabin when he was sure they were far enough away (after hours and hours, the sky bleeding pink and then into darkness. He only stops because he’s freezing, even with Ellie on his back, tucked into his jacket.) and had cleared it of any Infected before leading Ellie inside. 

She hadn’t slept on their journey, which he had uselessly hoped she would, and her eye bags are prominent on her ashen face. She looks at him with those wide eyes, watching his every move as he walks around the little cabin’s main room, hammering wood into busted windows to beat the cold and lighting lanterns. The place is surprisingly intact, probably because it’s in the middle of nowhere Utah, the Rockies a sight in the distance. He wonders if maybe he can get Ellie to admire them in the morning, distract her from whatever is going on inside of her head.

He finds some clothes, a little moth eaten but still good, in a closet and figures that the child size will be big enough for Ellie. He catches a Christmas elf design on the downy sweater and his heart aches in that detached way it always does. Ellie watches him set the pile of clothes down next to her, watches him collect snow from the front door step and watches him melt it in the fireplace. She’s silent the whole time.

He dips one of his worst for wear shirts into the warm water, keeping his hands in her line of sight the entire time. He hasn’t forgotten her terrible screams of ‘get off of me!’. He thinks it’s the kind of thing that will haunt his dreams forever now. 

“Gotten clean you up,” He says gently, bringing the shirt to her face. She makes a little noise when he touches her nose, and he hissed sympathetically, angling her face to get a look.

“Doesn’t look too broken,” He murmurs, cleaning it gently. She’s paled a little, but she’s so brave, sitting still so he can clean the blood off her face. “You’ll probably have a bump, just like me.” 

He points to his nose, where it’s a little crooked, hoping to get her to relax a little. Her eyes flicker from his own to his nose, and it works a little because her shoulders seem to loosen a bit. 

He’s worried though, because she’s still sitting up straighter than usual, tension in her back. Likely, she’s at least a little bruised, and his lips thin as he thinks about how they’re going to do this. 

“Babygirl,” He says, when she looks a little distant again. It does the trick, her focus sharpening on him once again. He gives her a gentle look, gesturing to her shirt. “Can I check? You look hurt.” 

At her startled expression, he quickly continues. “I won’t be looking nowhere I’m not supposed to, honey, I promise.”

She swallows hard, and he waits. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if she doesn’t give him permission. He’s not going to try and make her, but he can’t really think of how he’ll be able to check. 

Her voice comes out thin and wafer-like, hoarse from lack of use. His heart jumps into his throat just to hear her speak. “W-why do you have to check?” 

He gently takes her hands, and she reluctantly lets him, though he thinks it’s because of the blood and nothing else. He’s a little confused at what she’s asking, because it’s clear she’s hurt, but if she needs a little more clarification, he can do that.

“The way you’re sitting makes me think you probably have a broken rib or two,” He says patiently, and points to his own side as demonstration. “Couple of years ago, I got all tangled up with a couple of hunters. They busted my ribs real good, and I was sitting kinda like you are now, kiddo.” 

She hesitates, but that seems to make sense to her, as she takes her free hand to hover over her left rib cage. She looks like she’s evaluating, grimacing as if she’s reluctant to speak anymore. But she does, because she’s the toughest kid Joel’s ever met in his life.

“Don’t… don’t think I want you to touch,” And she says it like she’s apologizing. Joel wants to tell her she has nothing to be sorry for, but figures maybe that’ll make her shut down again, and instead continues with the task at hand. That seems to be keeping her grounded.

“Is it okay then,” He says, “If I look, so I can see if there’s anything too bad, and you can touch. You can feel if anything’s broken or doesn’t seem right, and we can figure it out.” 

After a moment, she nods. It’s an excruciating process, watching her lift the sweatshirt, and then seeming to want to die at wearing it, ripping it up over her head with a strangled yelp that has him up, helping her out of it as gently as possible. He averts his gaze as much as possible as she sits in only a training bra, but her distinct lack of undershirt strikes a shock through his body. She always wears one, uncomfortable with the material of sweaters against her skin. The lack of one confirms something to him he doesn’t want to think about. 

The bruises across her ribs and stomach are the most concerning though, already a deep red. They’re going to turn black, he can already tell, from how deep they look. But as she feels around, she (thankfully) doesn’t seem to have any broken bones. Though she must be in agonizing pain, telling from her twisted expression and glossy eyes, she doesn’t let the tears fall. 

Joel turns his back to her so she can slowly change into the warm clothes. 

When he turns back, he collects her previous attire. She wants him to burn it, she says, with an almost fire in her eyes that has him discarding the sweatshirt and then the jeans, but not before he notices the torn off zipper and button on the pants. 

In the end, he doesn’t have to ask, because Ellie notices his hesitation and sees his gaze. 

“He wanted to fuck me and then eat me after,” She says, so bluntly that he feels lightheaded. She seems shocked by her own words, and he’s afraid she’s going to go again, away from him, trapped in her own mind. But the words seem like a spark to oil, because she continues, seeming to be almost in some kind of different trance. “No, he wanted to fucking rape me and make me his child bride or some shit. In the fire, he got on top of me, he ripped my pants. He wanted to fucking rape me, he wanted to chop me into little pieces after he fucking raped—“ 

“Ellie.” 

Joel doesn’t recognize his own voice. It’s strangled, choked and gasping. Ellie stops abruptly, the color draining out of her face as he looks at him, and he hates what his expression must be. But he doesn’t want to picture it, this faceless man climbing on top of her and trying to touch her, threatening to eat her afterwards. His stomach rolls.

“I- Joel! ”

He’s puking onto her jeans. She scrambles, practically crawls over to him, and god dammit. He’s meant to be strong for her, and he wants to be. He wants to kill every fucking person in that town, he wants to rip apart anyone who even looked at the little girl in front of him. But he can’t stop vomiting. 

Ridiculously, he realizes she’s rubbing his back. 

“He didn’t,” He doesn’t realize he’s talking until the words gasp out of him. “He didn’t? Baby-“

“No,” She says quickly, eyes wide as she pats his back. There, shockingly, seems to be life coming back into her face as he balls up the jeans, clenching them in his hands, careful not to get bile on them. She shakes her head adamantly. “No, he didn’t. I swear.” 

She’s comforting him. When she’s the one who just went through hell and back, she’s comforting him. 

He throws the jeans into the fire, and then gathers Ellie into his arms. She goes readily, pliant as a newborn kitten, and he breathes her in. 

He loves her, he thinks. Loves her ferociously. Loves her more than anyone still living. 

If Sarah is a summer’s day then Ellie is spring rain. They’re not that alike, Sarah and Ellie, but Joel knows they would have loved each other. Sometimes, he dreams about what it would have been like if he had somehow been allowed to keep both of them– Sarah his summer’s day and Ellie his spring rain. He loves Ellie with the same intensity of loving Sarah. 

His baby girls. 

“Joel?” Ellie says, sometime later, when they’re both washed up and dressed in matching red flannel Christmas pajamas. It seems like him puking has somehow brought life back to her eyes, even if just for the moment. He’s getting ready for the puns already.

“Yeah?” He says quietly. She’s settled against his chest, and a throw blanket he found under the beat up couch has been tossed over her fully, partially over his legs. She sounds like she’s half asleep. 

“Your breath still smells like shit.” 

—— 

The peace doesn’t last very long. 

It’s not even a few hours later that Ellie’s waking up screaming, her voice shrill and tearing through the room. She’s screaming ‘get off, get off! ’ And Joel gets a fist to his face when he tries to wake her. His lip busts, and Ellie wakes with a harsh jerk. 

When she looks at him, blinking rapidly awake, and sees the blood on his lip and feels her aching knuckles— that is when she cries. 

She cries openly this time, the tears flooding out. It’s awful and relieving all at once, and she flings her arms around him tightly, the sobs hiccuping through her. 

These cries, at least, are honest and unafraid. 

—- 

Ellie has started crying in front of him now. 

He can’t tell if he hates it or not. On one hand, he hates it, the way her eyes well up and spill over, fat tears rolling down her face. On the other hand, he feels so warm in a way that might seem off-putting to other people. But having his girl trust him enough to cry in front of him when it’s been so obvious she tries everything in her fucking power to never cry in front of anyone— yeah, it feels good in a way. The trust.  

The next time she cries is blessedly, a happy occasion. 

It’s nearly four months into what was meant to be three weeks with the Fireflies in Salt Lake City, and she’s been stabbed with needles and put under anesthetic so many times that she’s spent more time in the hospital asleep than awake. She’s exhausted, bags under her eyes and skin sallow from all the medical experimentation. Every day Joel has let her know that they can leave, and every day she refuses, says they’ve got a job to do. She had to force him to wheel her back to her room, too exhausted to walk after another spinal tap, when the fucking good fucking doctor Anderson suggested that they might need to slice open her brain to get the proper specimens they need. 

It had been a dark day, that day. Joel and Marlene both had marched to Anderson’s office once Ellie was safely asleep in her bed again, and had personally let him know that if he thought he was getting anywhere near Ellie’s head he was copping a bullet and then some. 

Joel figures Marlene is pissed because the brilliant doctor was talking about something so stupid even Joel knew he was being a wack job. But maybe there is something in the clench of Marlene’s jaw and the way she set her shoulders, facing off against Anderson, that has him reconsidering. 

All in all, it doesn’t matter too much anyways, because two weeks later they have a cure, and Ellie’s marvelous brain is fully intact. 

“It’s not a cure,” Anderson says dryly to them, “It’s—“

“It fucking works, doc,” Ellie says, turning her face away to let the tears fall. Hidden again, for everyone except for Joel. “That’s what matters.” 

—- 

She cries when he sings to her on a warm spring night. 

They’re in Jackson, the whole galaxy overhead, their porch illuminated by the light of the kitchen window. He’s got his new guitar (or old, but though the wood is a little soft and the paint is chipped, it does the job just fine) on his lap, and Ellie’s sitting across from him on another chair. They’re these rounded wicker things, and it had been one of the first things Ellie had been able to buy herself. Of course, ‘buying’ isn’t really a thing here– but she had helped Mrs Foster down the road with her entire garden for a month in return for the woven chairs. Joel thinks the woman wanted the company just as much as the help, and Ellie knows it too, which is why she still visits every other day. 

“What’re we learning today, boss man?” Ellie asks, leaning forward with her elbows on her legs. She’s trying to act casual, but there’s an almost pleading longing in her eyes for him to start playing, and his heart swells at her eagerness. 

“Now you can’t laugh,” He says in warning, adjusting his hands. “I don’t know this one too well.” 

“Just hurry up and play it,” Ellie whines, and he chuckles as he begins to strum, picking at the strings with careful precision. He knows she wants to learn the music just as much as she wants to hear it, but for tonight he hopes she just listens to the song. And what he’s saying and not saying. 

He plays an old song by the Carpenters, one about birds and being close, and hopes that she understands the lyrics as he sings them a little gruffly. He’s not that amazing at this one yet, despite practicing whenever he has the time and she’s out of the house. 

But when he looks up as the song patters off, he sees she’s got a knee up against her torso, arm around it and cheek pressed against her knee, looking at him with those golden starlight eyes and tears down her cheeks. 

Before he can ask if she’s okay, she gives a watery smile and shakes her head. It’s a silent note that he should just enjoy the moment, enjoy her tears. 

These ones mean that she’s happy. These ones mean that she can cry freely, without fear.